Walking, mostly; and the things you might stumble across when doing it. Plus the odd angry rant…

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I’ve decided to abandon the blog: the intention is to leave it online for a while but, after this post, there will only be one further entry which will be – rather neatly – the 150th. There are a number of reasons – the wish to avoid repetition being one – but primary among them is the irritation of dealing with spammers, including the odd ones seeming to emanate from some pretty strange places; ‘odd’ in every sense of the word.

According to the stats captured by WordPress, the filters have eliminated 1,850 spam comments: that’s 1,850 I never even got to see – a number which needs to be added to the many hundreds I’ve had to delete at the point of moderation. I have no idea why I seem to attract so many fruitcakes to a site with relatively low traffic and generally innocuous subject matter, but there it is…

The pattern seems to be that a particular post becomes a focal point for random comments – some in languages which I don’t speak; others offering ‘opportunities’ for which I am neither young enough, nor sufficiently flexible. Closing that post to comments merely seems to have the effect of diverting the traffic to another target; and so it goes on…

As a last aside regarding outdoor matters, we were out on The Long Mynd at the weekend, in the best of autumn weather: the watercourses are slowly replenishing following the dry summer and, for the first time in many months, I elected to wear boots. It turned out to be the right decision but still not one I enjoyed.

Oh, and the golden plover had returned, as they often do about now. But they don’t seem to stay for the whole winter and I have no idea where the next part of their journey takes them.

The plan is to give Instagram a try – more pictures/fewer words. That is what the 150th post will be about. I’ll leave the blog out there, if only as a gateway to the many and excellent other outdoor sites.

Just returned from a couple of weeks based in Kingussie: tired from the M6; body back in the English midlands, head still somewhere meandering one of the endless trails; intending to make a start on a series of posts about selected days and escapades. But, before any of that, an oversight needed to be rectified…

We travelled north on Friday August 4th and there was something about the date that nagged at me; a couple of days later I would remember what it was. A year ago to the day, the blogging community sadly lost one of its finest: he went by the online name of Oldmortality and his blog – witty, erudite, original, thought-provoking, never dull – can be found among the links to the right, under the name One Small Step; OM’s final post was dated 27th July, 2016 and among the comments is one from his daughter confirming that he had passed away. If you’re not already familiar with the blog then I’d urge you to read through the backlog of posts while they still remain available; I still do, and I know I’m not alone. They are unique reflections on a life well lived.

This was where I was when I remembered why August 4th was significant…

It’s the Cairngorm Club footbridge across the Am Beanaidh, which flows north from Loch Einich, and the reason it’s significant is because it’s the spot where Oldmortality once met up with fellow blogger Mike Knipe (whose also excellent blog can be found here: northern pies); their rendezvous is also remembered in the comments attaching to OM’s final blog entry.

Memory jogged, I took a contemplative moment and resolved to do the same every time I’m fortunate enough to pass this way in the future.

Oldmortality loved his music and would often sign off with a link to a tune of his choice. I’m not sure this would have been on his playlist, but it somehow seemed appropriate…

That’s as good a way as any of summarising our outings of late: old haunts revisited; familiar routes reprised; two or three hours of borrowed time; longer days whenever opportunity presents. Brief escapes snatched from the seemingly remorseless clutches of life as it is now mostly lived. Not that we have much cause for complaint, but we’d probably all prefer to be doing a bit more of what we’d choose, a bit less of what’s required.

Habitually, we don’t take an awful lot of photographs; my tendency is to give priority to binoculars over a camera, but there is the occasional shot, usually intended as nothing more than a record of the day. These are just a few from recent weeks, accompanied by a bit of brief notation.

A grainy shot of a high-flying goshawk, taken in the Forest of Dean on a day when the weather was indeed glorious, although I don’t remember the sky being quite as blue and cloudless as the picture suggests…

The area has a reputation as a relative ‘hot spot’ for what is still a quite rare, although thankfully recovering, raptor (UK breeding population around 400 pairs). Usually I wouldn’t post a location for a sighting of a threatened bird of prey, but this particular site is already widely publicised online.

Wild ponies, Long Mynd: these animals are an ever-present feature of the Long Mynd, roaming across almost the entire expanse of the hills; sometimes in larger gatherings (I think the correct collective is ‘string’), at other times dispersed into smaller groups. Andy Howell – a Shropshire Hills regular – has written many blog entries about the area and regularly encounters the ponies… [Link]

Also taken on Long Mynd – one of a pair of falcons seen flying high above Light Spout Hollow and photographed at maximum zoom on a Sony HX300 Bridge Camera. With no detail visible on the camera’s LCD screen, we later cropped the image in Photoshop Elements (hence the grain) and then lightened it just enough for colours and markings to show. It looks like a hobby, which we’ve seen there before but usually skimming low over the ground chasing dragonflies…

Higher still, but much easier to identify – a pair of red kite…

Taken on 19th April, this was a day when we saw more kite than on any previous visit. We’d sometimes wondered whether the ones and twos spotted on previous occasions were the early settlers in a burgeoning population, or itinerants from Radnorshire on a day trip. We’re now hopeful of an eastward shift, as has previously happened with first buzzards then raven, and another step in the revival of an iconic species; they are still something of a rarity east of the Severn.

For anyone prepared to seek out the less populous parts of the hills, this whole area offers some of the best opportunities for spotting a variety of birds of prey; in fact, it’s one of the few places we know of where you could conceivably, in a single day, sight all three of our native falcons, plus a visiting hobby. It would need to be a lucky day, and at the right time of year, but it’s by no means inconceivable.

Wheatear is a variety we often see on the quieter parts of the Shropshire hills. This one was sufficiently obliging to sit still for a couple of shots…

This next one is an odd picture: for some reason – and my guess is user incompetence – the camera has focussed more precisely on the dried reeds than on the intended object, the meadow pipit. This gives the bird a slightly ghostly appearance, almost as if it had been struck down and become more powerful than could possibly have been imagined. I quite like the unintended strangeness of it…

Just taking off from Carding Mill Valley, a rescue helicopter presumably called out to assist with the search for a teenage girl who had been reported missing on the day in the vicinity of the hills. Thankfully, she turned up later in the day – safe and unharmed.

Also on the Severn Valley Railway: shunting operations at Highley Station. It was taken during the Easter holiday period and good to see that the trains on the day were consistently busy.

Recently I’ve started to take notice of the small oval ‘Shed’ plates attached to the front of steam locos; that’s probably the kind of thing I should be telling to a therapist. The one on the front of the engine nearest to the camera (85D) refers to the old steam shed at Kidderminster, so 1450 hasn’t strayed too far from home. Locomotive 1501 is displaying a former Old Oak Common plate (81A); this was the principal shed serving the Paddington end of the old GWR main line, and 1501 would have kept company with some very illustrious stablemates.

By the way, that’s not some very selective strain of computer virus specifically targeting Blogger and WordPress. It’s me I’m referring to; although it’s taken me a while to realise…

Back in the summer, the outdoor blogging community sadly lost one of its finest – Oldmortality. And there, straight away, that tells its own story: I never met him, never knew him by his real name; only by his blogger username.

His blog, One small step, was (and remains – follow this link) wise, funny, erudite, provocative, irreverent, endlessly entertaining, and all of the many other things you’d want to find in a blog. As if that wasn’t enough, he’d also frequently add links to some exceptionally fine musical treasures.

But here’s the thing: I visited One small step regularly, have read pretty much all of the back posts at some point, still do, and will continue to do so for as long as the link works. But I rarely commented: only a handful of times over the years and that’s true of other blogs as well and for all sorts of reasons. Now I’m wondering if passive reading of the efforts of others, without the mutuality of leaving at least a brief comment is tantamount to taking from the (blogging) community and contributing nothing – or not much – by way of reciprocation. People go to a lot of trouble to put this stuff in the public domain, generally without reward or any desire for it; maybe they deserve better recognition – something a bit more tangible than another tick in the stats counter.

I know some blog sites – this one among them – can make commenting less than straightforward: crossing platforms seems, if anything, to become less intuitive as the social media options continue to proliferate. Measures intended to keep the spammers at bay can be a deterrent to like-minded souls whose only intention is to add a constructive comment.

So, not normally given to the making of resolutions, I’ll break the habit and resolve firstly to comment more regularly on other blogs when I visit them, and secondly to explore ways of making this one a bit more accessible and welcoming.